Reading to Learn
Rationale:
To comprehend a text successfully, we can use the strategy of summarization to help with reading comprehension. For our students to develop into skilled readers, students must be able to find key details and main ideas in a text. The heart of summarization is superordinate predicate terms. With the use of this lesson, students will learn how to find the key points and separate the main ideas in a story. This will then help them to summarize the text they have read, after they have observed the teacher modeling how to delete trivial, or unimportant information and pick out the important details and information.
Materials:
1. Summarization Rules on Poster:
a. Leave out unimportant information.
b. Leave out repeated information.
c. Pick out important information.
d. Find an umbrella term.
e. Create a topic sentence.
2. Highlighter and pencil for each student.
3. Student copies of “Into the Wild” TimeForKids Article and “African Elephant” Kids National Geographic article
4. Teacher copy of “Into the Wild” TimeForKids Article and “African Elephant” Kids National Geographic article
5. Summarization Checklist Rubric for each student
6. Article on Smartboard in the front of the class
7. Rules of Summarization bookmark
8. Comprehension Questions:
a. “Into the Wild”
i. What parts of the world do elephants roam in?
ii. How do elephants travel?
iii. What do elephants use to eat and drink water?
iv. What do elephants use to dig or defend themselves?
b. “African Elephant”
i. How long is an adult African elephants’ trunk?
ii. What is a trunk?
iii. What do elephants use to protect their skin?
iv. What do elephants do when they feel they are in danger?
Procedures:
1. Say: “Today we are going to learn how to become expert readers by learning to summarize! With the use of summarizing, we can better comprehend what we are reading. Can anyone tell me what it means to summarize when you read? (students respond). That is right! A reader will read the passage or part of the text and then take the most important details and main ideas of the text to retell what the story was all about. Do we want to mention every detail we read? (students respond). No! We only want to mention the important details and leave out the unimportant information! Summarizing our text can also help us to understand or comprehend what we read. Does anyone know what comprehend means? (students respond). When we comprehend what we have read, we can understand what we have read and understand the meaning behind the story.”
2. Next, I will review the summarization checklist with my students (display on poster board for students to see).
· Leave out details that are unimportant or trivial because that information does not help us understand the text to summarize.
· Leave out details that are repeated because that text has already been used or seen and will lead to confusion.
· Pick out important information from the text because those important details and main ideas will help us to summarize the text to comprehend the message of the text.
· Find an umbrella term for the events that happen in the text.
· Create a topic sentence that tells us what the text is about and mentions the main ideas presented in the text to introduce your summary.
3. Say: "Now, we are going to read an article about Elephants (Teacher puts article up on SmartBoard and passes out individual article for each student). We are going to read the article silently, and then we will discuss it all together (Teacher and students read article silently). I will pass out the cut outs of elephants to each student. If you have finished reading, you can begin writing down our Rules of Summarization from the poster on your cut out to help you remember the steps on how to summarize. You can also use it to mark your place in your text. I will now review our rules of summarization before our discussion (teacher reviews summarization rules).”
4. Say: “Before we begin summarizing, we are going to review some of the vocabulary throughout the article, so we understand what the words mean before we begin trying to comprehend the text. Looking at ‘Into the Wild’ article, the first paragraph’s fifth sentence uses the new word mammal. This sentence says, “Let’s learn about these incredible mammals.” This sentence tells me that the word mammal has something to do with elephants. Mammal means a type of animal that gives birth to live babies instead of laying eggs and feed milk to their young. So, by knowing this, it means that elephants give birth instead of laying eggs and they feed milk to their babies just like humans do. It is important to know the term mammal, so we know about the characteristics of an elephant. (Ask students) So, are some elephants not mammals? (students respond). No! All elephants are mammals because they all give birth to their babies and feed their babies milk.”
5. Say: "I am now going to show you how you would summarize the third paragraph of the article by following our summarization steps. First, we are supposed to leave out the unimportant information. For example, we can take out part of the last two sentences because they do not talk about what is given in this paragraph. Second, we are going to make sure we leave out repeated information in our summarization. There is proof we have done this successfully from our first step of taking out unimportant information. Third, we will pick out the important information to include in our summary. After looking at the sentences, we will pick out important information such as elephants having long, flexible trunks which helps them eat, breathe and drink water. My passage should look like this when I highlight the important information and cross out unimportant and repeated information (Teacher shows highlighted passage on SmartBoard and allow students time to highlight their own copy).”
6. Say: "Now, I want you to try and summarize the last three paragraphs of the Into the Wild article. I will be walking around to assist you and feel free to work with a partner for help as well. Make sure you use your elephant bookmark and look at your summarization steps listed. Use the highlighter you have to mark important information and use your pen or pencil to cross out the unimportant or repeated texts you have determined from the paragraphs. After looking at the important text we have highlighted, we will construct one topic sentence on what the assigned passage was all about. When you are finished working on your own individual summarization, share your topic sentence and the summarization process with your partner. When everyone has finished sharing with their partner, we will discuss this as a class". (students have completed task). What did you highlight as important? (students respond) What did you cross out as unimportant? (students respond) What was your topic sentence? (allow students time to share). Your marked paragraph should look similar to this (show example of my paragraph).”
7. Say: "To complete our lesson on summarization, I am handing out our final article titled: 'African Elephants'. This article gives more facts and experiences about elephants. I want you to read the entire article, use the steps of summarization on your elephant bookmark to guide your summarization steps (highlighting important information and crossing our unimportant information), and construct a paragraph of a few sentences on the entire article using the highlighted information with a topic sentence. Use the answers to the questions of: 'What is the article about? What is the purpose of this article? If I told someone about this article, what would I say?' Answer the comprehension questions on the board and then complete the sentence exercise on the board: Elephants have _____. Tusks are gigantic ____. The animal uses them to ___ and for _______. Remember to use complete sentences and correct punctuation!”
8. For my assessment of my students, I will collect the articles the students marked, a paragraph with the topic sentence, and the answers to the comprehension questions. The summarization checklist rubric (table below) will be to assess the paragraph the students wrote on "Into the Wild" using the following criteria: Deleting unimportant information, deleting repeated information, constructing a topic sentence. It is also important to include supporting details and construct a summary that includes the main ideas.
Summarizing Checklist Rubric:
When summarizing, did the student…
Construct a simple topic sentence? Yes/No
Delete unimportant information? Yes/No
Delete repeated information? Yes/No
Include supporting details? Yes/No
Construct a summary that includes the main idea? Yes/No
References:
https://www.timeforkids.com/k1/into-the-wild-3/
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/african-elephant/
https://taylordhoff.wixsite.com/lesson-designs/reading-is-learning-rl-desig